We are so lucky to have such wonderful family and friends, from the loan of a car, to the use of a hall as a sail loft, to the provision of copious amounts of English biscuits, our welcome back has been generous and effusive. It is possible that we may explode from the quantities of food and drink we have consumed but the company has been fantastic and we still have a week to enjoy. 

Checking the cruising chute in ‘the other’ Rick and Roz’s long hallway.

The weather has been very English with a mix of bright sunny days and cool, drizzly ones. In the two or so weeks we have been here the landscape has morphed from the greeness we arrived to, to the beautiful oranges and reds of Autumn.

It has also been raining in Las Palmas we understand and the dingy has had to be emptied, thank you Gavin ( K1W1-Beans). And there has been reports of rats climbing warps to get onto boats! Having lived in the countryside for many years we have had our fair share of invading rodent life, but sharing our journey across the Atlantic with a rat doesn’t bear thinking about. A thorough search of the boat is called for I think.

Generally however we are feeling much better about leaving Raya now more ARC boats have arrived, including some of our yachting friends who have also been checking up on her for us. 

In addition we have had Yanmar Engineers on board. Ever since we bought the boat we have had a problem with a blowback from the engine coolant if we really push the engine, many people have tried to find the problem without success. In Las Palmas, fingers crossed, we seem to have found a horse whisperer for engines. Rick was pleased to discover a Yanmar service workshop on the dock in Las Palmas, initially things looked unpromising as their English was limited and our Spanish even worse. The engineer didn’t need words however, he just listened and felt the engine quietly for half an hour, eventually identifying a tiny stream of bubbles rising through the coolant and a minuscule hole in the gasket. They came on board last week to replace it, so hopefully that is one more problem ticked off.

We are beginning to think that our return baggage could be getting out the control. We have the two bags of clothes we bought with us, add in the large amount of shopping we have managed to buy in the last couple of weeks, ten large paper charts of the Pacific, fancy dress costumes for the ARC ‘eighties movies’ fancy dress party, Christamas lights for our family Carribean Christmas and a huge sail bag.

On the sail down from Gibraltar, with the boat struggling in the light winds directly behinds us, we made the decision to collect the cruising chute. When we bought Raya there was one onboard, but we decided it would be too difficult for the two of us to manage and would take up too much of our precious space, so we left it in the storage unit in Southampton. With our growing confidence sailing the boat, realising how little space we can actually squeeze our new life into and the fact that we have friends on board for the next few months of mainly downwind sailing, we have decided to take it back to Las Palmas with us. An extremely frustrating four hours on the phone later and I think BA/Iberia have agreed we can fly with it.

In the few free moments we have had, we have been busily thinking about the best way to feed four people three meals a day for the Atlantic crossing. We expect the crossing to take about eighteen days so that’s quite a bit of food and it’s not just the what to eat, we also have to factor in the when to eat what. It’s no good planning to have chicken salad on day sixteen when all the lettuce, tomatoes etc will have gone off or pasta for day four when it turns out to be very rough and boiling big pans of water is not a great idea. When you mix in the fact that we are shopping in a foreign country and the will or won’t the freezer work all the way, provisioning is going to be quite a challenge.

Picking up the Pacific charts and flags, reminds us that before we head back to Las Palmas, we also have lots of even further forward planning to do. When we are not indulging in our friends hospitality and we can drag our brains away from Atlantic preparations, we have to start thinking about permits and agents for the Panama Canal and Galapogas. Then there is a need for rough timings so the friends that are joining us can plan their flights, crew letters to leave here so they can get through customs, the much more complicated logistics of no longer being in Europe including family emergency communication etc, etc, etc………..

Sailing? It really is the easy bit!

I am having breakfast sitting on the bows watching the world go by, it is still comfortably cool, the morning is overcast. Everywhere I look there are hundreds of yachts, unlike all the marinas we have visited before, here, there are surprisingly few motor boats. Directly to the right of us we have a hand built fifty foot yacht, built by a couple who come to Las Palmas each winter to escape the snow and dark of the Swedish winter. On the other side we have almost the opposite, a Jeanneau 54 DS a shiny new production boat who’s owners have yet to appear. In further contrast to our stern there is a tiny, ramshackle, unloved boat that looks like it may not last the winter, it is doubtful as to whether it even has an owner. Beyond that are more and varied yachts, which means more and varied rigging, in fact it is as if I am sitting in a small clearing in a jungle of rigging.

At first that appears to be all I can see but as I peer through the forest of masts it becomes apparent that there is so much more going on. Encircling the marina is a wall protecting us from the Atlantic weather, it runs around almost 360 degrees with just a narrow entrance, today the swell outside must be coming from just the right angle as we are all rocking and the pontoons are undulating in time with the surge. 

On two sides the wall is topped by a walk way, full with early joggers, dog walkers and fisherman. To the west, on the town side, the marina edge is populated with everything a sailor could need, a very comprehensive chandlers, a sail loft and a mixture of engineering companies. There are restaurants and a Club Maritimo, which offers a temporary membership to visiting yachtsmen and provides me with a place to swim. However nothing much opens here until nine and so all is quiet on that front. Finally to the right is the welcome pontoon and marina office. This morning there is a yacht that arrived during the night, flying their ARC flag, tied up alongside. Each day more ARC boats arrive much to the consternation of the local boats, many of whom are gradually being moved to an anchorage just outside the marina to make room.

Just beyond the wall I can see the bobbing sails of a flotilla of sailing dinghies making the most of the brisk breeze. They race against a back drop of the commercial docks which are surprisingly large for such a small island. I can count a dozen cranes and at the moment there are two huge tankers being loaded with containers stacked seven stories high.

Behind me is the city, a busy dual carriageway runs along the front and even at this early hour the ambulances from the multi-storey hospital that towers above the marina have their blue lights flashing and their sirens wailing to past through the traffic. This part of town is a jumble of high rise blocks and looking from here there is little sign of style or planning.

And finally to my left is the cruise ship dock. In town today is our old friend the “giraffe cruise liner”. It was often moored up in Southampton while we were there last winter and the purpose of a rather incongruous, large plastic giraffe on the top deck was the subject of much discussion. He is obviously very good, never the less, at whatever it is he does because he is still standing proud, overlooking with me this busy slice of the world.

We have arrived in Las Palmas, Grand Canaria, which means the European leg of our trip is now complete. The summer has past so quickly and it is difficult to comprehend that our next passage will be across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

We left Lanzarote on Sunday night, we were only half convinced that it was the right decision, Rick had come down with my tummy bug a couple of days before and was only just on the mend. However the weather looked perfect and it did mean we would be sailing under the red moon. 

It was just under 100nm so we opted for an early start to maximise sailing in daylight and got up at 2am. We slipped the lines as quietly as we could and tip toed out of the marina. We have never left in the dark before and were surprised how long it took for our eyes to adjust to the dark. But we made it out to sea without incident, grateful again for our chart plotter and AIS system. 

The moon was almost completely eclipsed as we left and by the time we had stowed the fenders and lines, set the sails and were settled enough to look for it again, we couldn’t see it. For a moment we thought we had got it wrong thinking it would be red and that actually it would just go dark, but then we found it hidden behind the main sail. It was a perfectly clear night and it did look beautiful glowing a dark orange with just a hint of light peeping out of the base. It was easy to see why such a strange unexplained sight, century’s ago, could be imagined as a forewarning of doom, it did look very unnatural. Gradually as the night wore on we witnessed the shadow slowly withdraw until there it was back, a full moon. We do feel lucky to witness these things from such a unique and uncluttered perspective.

The next morning we had a tiny visitor, a chiffchaff type bird with a pretty pale yellow chest, which flew erratically around the boat for a few minutes, until exhausted it landed on our deck. Unfortunately we were also on the foredeck in the middle of rigging the pole for the Genoa and so wherever the poor bird tried to rest we, or a line, seemed to be there to disturb him. He stayed around for twenty minutes or so coming very close to us at times and eating a few crumbs we put out for him. I hope we were taking him in the right direction.

Poor Rick felt unwell for most of the journey, unless he was really needed I let him sleep, so we arrived fifteen hours later, Rick sick and me feeling really rather tired. It crossed my mind that we were a bit like our earlier visitor all of us working hard to get south for winter. Tradition insists of course that despite not being on top form a “got here beer” must be consumed and with surprisingly little effort we managed a can between us while waiting for the marina officials to get through the queue in front of us. Luckily the process wasn’t too arduous and we were soon tied up at the dock. No more sailing for us for a while.

Las Palmas is our departure point to head off across the Atlantic in November. We are crossing as part of a rally – the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers or the ARC. It is probably the most well known of all sailing rallies and over 250 boats will be joining this year for its 30th anniversary. We felt for our first ocean crossing that it would be a good idea to have some support and a chance to learn from the experts. We know quite a few people who have done it in previous years and it sounds like it’s going to be really good fun. The organisation so far has been exemplary, even down to the information pack for early arrivals that was handed to us on our arrival yesterday containing maps, ways to enjoy Grand Canaria, fliers from local businesses etc. 

Las Palmmas Marina is huge and rather full I can’t imagine where they are going to find room enough to accommodate the hundreds of boats that will descend in the next few weeks. A very different place than the last few marinas we have been in, our pontoon is full to bursting with sailing boats of all shapes and sizes. Many of them homes to live aboards,  many making their own preparations for an Atlantic crossing, others that seem like they haven’t moved for years. There definitely won’t be a problem hanging out the laundry here.

We have just over a week before we fly back to the UK for three weeks, when we return we expect to find many more rally boats have arrived and within a couple of days the ARC office will open and it will be full steam ahead for preparations and parties. Our task for the next week therefore, is to try and get as much done as we can before the crowds arrive. 

What’s the chance of finally finding someone who can work out the problem with our temperamental freezer, can we pick up everything we need from the chandler here and exactly how many cold drinks will four people drink over a three week period??